by Brian Balke | Jan 4, 2020 | Basics, Specializations
How many things do you do without thinking about them? You might include “walking” and perhaps even “using a knife and fork.” But did you include adjusting your pulse rate and blood pressure when you exercise? Releasing fat for conversion to sugar in the liver? For...
by Brian Balke | Nov 12, 2019 | Active Aging, Specializations
Life in Harmony Developed in the third quarter of the 20th century, the Ericksons’ Stages of Development end at age 65. Today if we live to 65, we have a 50% chance of living to 90. Given that nearly a third of life can be lived after retirement, we would expect to...
by Brian Balke | Oct 30, 2019 | Active Aging, Specializations
Inner Peace What does inner peace look like? To many, it would be a serene spiritual figure – the Virgin Mary, Gandhi, or White Tara. Can we imagine becoming that? Probably not, and it’s not what I mean by “inner peace.” Inner peace is not an endpoint, it’s a...
by Brian Balke | Oct 7, 2019 | Active Aging, Specializations
Life Review While philosophers make much of reason, the most complex parts of the mind evolved to help us create communities. Community starts with the family – we look at our parents’ faces and find comfort or distress. Sometimes those responses are instinctive: when...
by Brian Balke | Oct 1, 2019 | Active Aging, Specializations
Marvelous Opportunity Most clients seek hypnotherapy to correct behaviors that limit success. In later years, that motivation shrinks – we don’t have to stand up in front of an audience or look good in a bikini. So why would a senior client seek hypnotherapy? Certain...
by Brian Balke | Aug 13, 2019 | Book Reviews, Specializations
When I reached 50, friends began advising me to color my hair. I laughed – given what I’d been through in my 40s, I was proud of the evidence that I’d made it that far. In “Elderhood,” Louise Aronson reflects on a career in gerontology (the medical specialty that...